Someone likes me, she really likes me..

...I imagine all creatives have those days. And yesterday was one of them. Aaron and I were talking about painting the entire front of the store black and installing that doorbell. People were wandering in and out, not getting off their cellphones, not acknowledging our greetings...and then she appeared. A dimnuitive, well put together woman. I offered her information - she said she was just "soaking it in, having been here before."

And then as she was leaving, she quietly approached me and explained that she had worked in traveling theatre for many years. She was a costumer, a designer and worked with the clothing of many, many designers. She considered herself a conceptual designer. And then she said it: "Your work is genius." She thought it was beautiful and intelligent and very, very good. Quite taken aback, by the combination of her quiet demeanor and her seriousness, I thanked her and said how nice that was to hear - sweet, even. Ack ! I used that "S" word. And she responded: "No! I am not sweet, nor am I nice. Really, I am not. I just like to tell the truth..."

Wow.

Field trip with Skulls...

...my friend Alton teases me about skulls. But, I have always been and still am a sucker for the macabre: skulls, spiders, bones, taxidermy...but all of the most luxurious kind. So, when I walked into Grange Hall in Dallas on the recommendation of my creative soul sister, Pamela Tuohy of 2ETN jewelry, I was in heaven. It was a quick scan and I felt at home. With Evan and the twins napping in the car before our next stop I perused the the delicately edited selection of curiousities, jewelry and art pieces and fell in love with many. The environment felt neither trendy nor too precious. It felt lovely and calm with inviting vitrines and exquisite displays and merchandising. The selection is not for everyone and I am sure - not unlike my shop -they get the misunderstanders, the questionable gawkers and the just plain "don't get its."




photos from the Urban Flower Grange Hall website

It's a wickedly delightful combination of precise buying on the level of the famed Parisian clothing boutiques: L'Eclaireur - but for gifts, combined with the curiousness of the taxidermied animals of Deyrolle, and augmented by the collector's feel of Sir John Soane's Museum in London. I want my clothing on their dress forms as art, draped in their selected bijoux.

So, now when people ask me, what is there do see in Dallas?...I can tell them...plus, they sell my absolute favorite scent of a brown candle from the Hotel Costes.

Don't miss this jewel.

Spelling it out...

...a mission statement
a message
a public declaration...

Feeling: moved by the Medieval...

... I love The Cloisters - a separate collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, way up in northern Manhattan, on the A train at 190th Street. There is something about the serenity of the gardens and the buildings that draws me in - feels so otherworldly. One breathes the air of the monastic life yet is overwhelmed by the color and beauty of the tapestries and sculpture.
I am finding inspiration in the Medieval right now...not so much about the stark dress, yet the composition of colors, the delicate features of the artistry without the flesh of the Renaissance. There is something basic and pure, yet lyrical. So when I draw on this inspiration, its not about Van Eyck-like dresses and velvets with long sleeves and draping vestments (although he is actually more late-Medieval, I just love this painting.) I am layering color, patch-working grasses, tress, and unicorns...imagining the dense throbbing of Gregorian chants. I guess you'll have to wait and see what I come up with...






But an aside: I was probably around 13, the first time I ever visited the Cloisters. I had amazing art teachers in Middle School and they took us everywhere. Even at that age, I felt like an old soul looking for the stone walls and silence of a Medieval cathedral. I was by myself, all knee length hair and adolescent gawkiness and was approached by a man. He complemented me on my beautiful tresses and compared me to a woman in the tapestries and we talked art. It was until much later that I realized that would never be allowed to happen to a pre-teenager today. And that's probably a good thing...

Patinate, to patinate, patination...

I struggle with reading William Gibson, but plow through because the little jewels stop me in my tracks and I read them over and over...amazing...

..."Everything they were wearing, he decided, qualified as what she'd call 'iconic', but had originally become that way through its ability to gracefully patinate. She was big on patination. That was how quality wore in, she said, as opposed to out. Distressing, on the other hand, was the faking of patination, and was actually a way of concealing a lack of quality."

- William Gibson, Zero History

Klein blue...

...it's in my thoughts, in the thoughts of a friend/collaborator, in a book that I am reading...there's even an Australian punk band named after the color...



French artist, Yves Klein, a postmodernist, sometimes neo-Dadaist, started painting monochromes in the late 1940's..
"From the reactions of the audience, [Klein] realized that...viewers thought his various, uniformly colored canvases amounted to a new kind of bright, abstract interior decoration. Shocked at this misunderstanding, Klein knew a further and decisive step in the direction of monochrome art would have to be taken...From that time onwards he would concentrate on one single, primary color alone: blue."

He went on to produce art in many forms but I adored his devotion to a single color. It's on my mind...

Clarksville Dentelle...

...recent press in Austin Monthly, February 2011: